Book Image

Visualize Complex Processes with Microsoft Visio

By : David J Parker, Šenaj Lelić
Book Image

Visualize Complex Processes with Microsoft Visio

By: David J Parker, Šenaj Lelić

Overview of this book

Every business has process flows, but not all of them are fully described to or verified for accuracy with each stakeholder. This not only presents a risk for business continuity but also removes the ability to make insightful improvements. To make these complex interactions easy to grasp, it’s important to describe these processes visually using symbology that everybody understands. Different parts of these flows should be collaboratively developed and stored securely as commercial collateral. Visualize Complex Processes with Microsoft Visio helps you understand why it is crucial to use a common, systematic approach to document the steps needed to meet each business requirement. This book explores the various process flow templates available in each edition of Microsoft Visio, including BPMN. It also shows you how to use them effectively with the help of tips and techniques and examples to reduce the time required for creating them, as well as how you can improve their integration and presentation. By the end of this book, you’ll have mastered the skills needed to create data-integrated business flowcharts with Microsoft Visio, learned how to effectively use these diagrams collaboratively, but securely, and understood how to integrate them with other M365 apps, including Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Power Automate.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Summary

We are at the end of this book now, and we have learned how to create process flow diagrams with both the web and desktop editions of Visio. We have learned how we can create flowcharts automatically from an Excel table, and we can save diagrams back into an Excel table. We have seen how we can create a Power Automate Flow from a BPMN diagram, and how we can export to Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. We have learned how can enhance existing master shapes and distribute them to others in a custom template. We have done all of this without using any Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), built into desktop Visio, or any external programming application such as C# or vb.net. We have just scratched the surface of the smartness that Visio is capable of, but this book has to finish somewhere!

Author’s note

I started using Visio in my consulting work in the mid-1990s because of its flexibility to be adapted for almost any data visualizing requirement. I am still learning more...